Trevor noah imaginary friend

Copyright © 2016 by Trevor Noah All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. SPIEGEL & GRAU and Design is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Noah, Trevor, author.

Title: Born a crime: stories from a South African childhood / by Trevor Noah. Description: First edition. | New York : Spiegel & Grau, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016031399| ISBN 9780399588174 | ISBN 9780399590443 (international) | ISBN 9780399588181 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Noah, Trevor | Comedians—United States—Biography. | Comedians—South Africa—Biography. | Television personalities—

United States—Biography. Classification: LCC PN2287.N557 A3 2016 | DDC 791.4502/8092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016031399

Ebook ISBN 9780399588181 spiegelandgrau.com

Book design by Susan Turner, adapted for ebook Cover design: Greg Mollica

Cover image: Mark Stutzman, based on a photograph by Kwaku Alston (Trevor Noah); Getty Images (background)

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https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031399
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Contents

Cover Title Page Copyright Immorality Act, 1927

Part I Chapter 1: Run Chapter 2: Born a Crime Chapter 3: Trevor, Pray Chapter 4: Chameleon Chapter 5: The Second Girl Chapter 6: Loopholes Chapter 7: Fufi Chapter 8: Robert

Part II Chapter 9: The Mulberry Tree Chapter 10: A Young Man’s Long, Awkward, Occasionally Tragic, and Frequently Humiliating

Education in Affairs of the Heart, Part I: Valentine’s Day Chapter 11: Outsider Chapter 12: A Young Man’s Long, Awkward, Occasionally Tragic, and Frequently Humiliating

Education in Affairs of the Heart, Part II: The Crush Chapter 13: Colorblind Chapter 14: A Young Man’s Long, Awkward, Occasionally Tragic, and Frequently Humiliating

Education in Affairs of the Heart, Part III: The Dance

Part III Chapter 15: Go Hitler! Chapter 16: The Cheese Boys Chapter 17: The World Doesn’t Love You Chapter 18: My Mother’s Life

Dedication Acknowledgments About the Author

IMMORALITY ACT, 1927

To prohibit illicit carnal intercourse between Europeans and natives and other acts in relation thereto.

BE IT ENACTED by the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, the Senate and the House of Assembly of the Union of South Africa, as follows:—

1. Any European male who has illicit carnal intercourse with a native female, and any native male who has illicit carnal intercourse with a European female…shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years.

2. Any native female who permits any European male to have illicit carnal intercourse with her and any European female who permits any native male to have illicit carnal intercourse with her shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to imprisonment for a period not exceeding four years….

The genius of apartheid was convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other. Apart hate, is what it was. You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all.

At the time, black South Africans outnumbered white South Africans nearly five to one, yet we were divided into different tribes with different languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho, Venda, Ndebele, Tsonga, Pedi, and more. Long before apartheid existed these tribal factions clashed and warred with one another. Then white rule used that animosity to divide and conquer. All nonwhites were systematically classified into various groups and subgroups. Then these groups were given differing levels of rights and privileges in order to keep them at odds.

Perhaps the starkest of these divisions was between South Africa’s two dominant groups, the Zulu and the Xhosa. The Zulu man is known as the warrior. He is proud. He puts his head down and fights. When the colonial armies invaded, the Zulu charged into battle with nothing but spears and shields against men with guns. The Zulu were slaughtered by the thousands, but they never stopped fighting. The Xhosa, on the other hand, pride themselves on being the thinkers. My mother is Xhosa. Nelson Mandela was Xhosa. The Xhosa waged a long war against the white man as well, but after experiencing the futility of battle against a better-armed foe, many Xhosa chiefs took a more nimble approach. “These white people are here whether we like it or not,” they said. “Let’s see what tools they possess that can be useful to us. Instead of being resistant to English, let’s learn English. We’ll understand what the white man is saying, and we can force him to negotiate with us.”

The Zulu went to war with the white man. The Xhosa played chess with the white man. For a long time neither was particularly successful, and each blamed the other for a problem neither had created. Bitterness festered. For decades those feelings were held in check by a common enemy. Then apartheid fell, Mandela walked free, and black South Africa went to war with itself.

RUN

Sometimes in big Hollywood movies they’ll have these crazy chase scenes where somebody jumps or gets thrown from a moving car. The person hits the ground and rolls for a bit. Then they come to a stop and pop up and dust themselves off, like it was no big deal. Whenever I see that I think, That’s rubbish. Getting thrown out of a moving car hurts way worse than that.

I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car. It happened on a Sunday. I know it was on a Sunday because we were coming home from church, and every Sunday in my childhood meant church. We never missed church. My mother was—and still is—a deeply religious woman. Very Christian. Like indigenous peoples around the world, black South Africans adopted the religion of our colonizers. By “adopt” I mean it was forced on us. The white man was quite stern with the native. “You need to pray to Jesus,” he said. “Jesus will save you.” To which the native replied, “Well, we do need to be saved—saved from you, but that’s beside the point. So let’s give this Jesus thing a shot.”

My whole family is religious, but where my mother was Team Jesus all the way, my grandmother balanced her Christian faith with the traditional Xhosa beliefs she’d grown up with, communicating with the spirits of our ancestors. For a long time I didn’t understand why so many black people had abandoned their indigenous faith for Christianity. But the more we went to church and the longer I sat in those pews the more I learned about how Christianity works: If you’re Native American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage. If you’re African and you pray to your ancestors, you’re a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that’s just common sense.